Problem: Tomcat II + NT + CD + SMP
Nick
I have a problem with my Tyan tomcat motherboard, and as I haven't yet
had a response from Tyan (I did only mail them yesterday), and I'm getting
pretty desparate so I thought I'd bother all of you with it !
Below is a copy of the mail I sent to Tyan, any help appreciated.
>>>
I have just purchased a Tyan Tomcat II motherboard and am running it with
NT4.0, and two P133 processors.
I believe there is a bug either with the NT support for SMP, or the
Motherboard / BIOS.
Symptom : When running in dual processor mode my CD-ROM (Mitsumi 4x ATAPI,
master Secondary IDE (only device)) does not work. It works
fine in Dos, and when NT is installed for only one processor.
The message in the event viewer says the device failed to
respond within the timeout period. The SCSI applet in control
panel says there are no devices attached the the secondary port.
When I shutdown NT, and restart the computer (soft boot) the system
configuration screen does not show the CD-ROM drive at all, and
DOS cannot detect it either. The machine requires a hard reset to
restore the CD-ROM.
It seems NT is crashing the secondary IDE controller, or CD-ROM
drive.
Full System Spec:
Tyan Tomcat II Motherboard 512K cache
32 Mb non-EDO ram (2 x 16)
PCI Matrox Millenium (2Mb WRAM)
1 x 3.5" floppy drive
Primary IDE
Master IBM 528 MB
Slave IBM 548 MB
Secondary IDE
Master Mitsumi CD-Rom (4x)
NE2000 Compatible Network Card (i/o 300, irq 11)
OS MS Windows NT v4.0 beta 2 (same problem with beta 1)
I have tried various bios settings, but none made any difference. I have
also changed the cdrom to slave. I cannot swap the CD-Rom and the slave
hard disk because my system would be unable to boot.
I also tried the tyan bus mastering drivers, but NT refused to boot with
the message 'unable to find boot device'.
If this is a known bug please let me know how to solve it, if not please
fix it ;-)
I will be happy to try any suggestions give more details if required.
Nick
<<<
I am not discounting the fact that NT is a beta, and could be causing the
problem, I will install NT 3.51 as soon as I can borrow a hard disk, and
see what happens then.
Cheers
Nick
.-----------------------------------------------------------------------,
| Nicholas Liebmann, | n...@isolde.nd.rl.ac.uk |
| Rutherford Appleton Lab. | cm3b...@bsvms.staffs.ac.uk |
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/
\ wxWindows Binary Archive - ftp://ftp.nd.rl.ac.uk/pub/packages/wxwin /
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Nick
On Wed, 12 Jun 1996, Daniel Lewis wrote:
> In article <4pm1f8$12...@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk> you wrote:
>
> : I have a problem with my Tyan tomcat motherboard, and as I haven't yet
> : had a response from Tyan (I did only mail them yesterday), and I'm getting
> : pretty desparate so I thought I'd bother all of you with it !
>
> No, I don't have an answer, sorry. :) However, I would like some information
> if you are able to help. I have a Tomcat II currently running with a single
> P133. I intend to purchase a second P133 and run NT 4.0, taking advantage
> of the SMP capabilities.
>
> Overall, how does the board perform with two processors, other than your
> problems with IDE drivers? Is it significantly faster than single-processor
> operation?
>
> thanks,
> Dan Lewis
Well it's a little hard for me to say as I hod two processors from the
start, although I did run NT in single processor mode for an hour or so,
before I performed the update. Also I was so overwhelmed with the speed
increase from my DX4-100 even in single mode that my judgment might be a
little distorted.
It's safe to say that adding the extra processor / going into SMP mode
does make a difference, but a P133 is pretty damn quick anyway.
I suspect that it really depends on the type of work you are going to be
doing on the machine.
I didn't run any benchmarks, but tried out the maze screen saver, and it
seemed to make very little difference, (perhaps it is not
multithreaded)however the 3d text one, and 3D pipes ran noticably faster.
Some of my own multithreaded programs also ran alot faster.
I reckon (just a guess) that the overall performance boost brings it up
to between a single 180 and 200 pentium, which when you look at the price
difference makes it damn good value !
The best thing about having 2 processors is that you can monitor each
processor individually, and the new look task manager shows a graph
for each :-))
..-----------------------------------------------------------------------,
J.Glenn Miller
n...@isolde.nd.rl.ac.uk (Nick) wrote:
>I have a problem with my Tyan tomcat motherboard, and as I haven't yet
>had a response from Tyan (I did only mail them yesterday), and I'm getting
>pretty desparate so I thought I'd bother all of you with it !
>Below is a copy of the mail I sent to Tyan, any help appreciated.
>>>>
>I have just purchased a Tyan Tomcat II motherboard and am running it with
>NT4.0, and two P133 processors.
>I believe there is a bug either with the NT support for SMP, or the
>Motherboard / BIOS.
>Symptom : When running in dual processor mode my CD-ROM (Mitsumi 4x ATAPI,
> master Secondary IDE (only device)) does not work. It works
> fine in Dos, and when NT is installed for only one processor.
> The message in the event viewer says the device failed to
> respond within the timeout period. The SCSI applet in control
> panel says there are no devices attached the the secondary port.
>
> When I shutdown NT, and restart the computer (soft boot) the system
> configuration screen does not show the CD-ROM drive at all, and
> DOS cannot detect it either. The machine requires a hard reset to
> restore the CD-ROM.
> It seems NT is crashing the secondary IDE controller, or CD-ROM
> drive.
I have the same problem. Tyan ( Chuck from tech support) is aware of
it and, I believe is looking into it.
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t.wi...@ix.netcom.com
Anything on the second edi channel doesn't work with nt beta 2
and this setup I've tried it on 4 systems with this same motherboard
and they all have the problem - I suspect it is the beta nt release -
ive been told that 3.51 works but im not willing to reinstall for the
40th time - I just disabled my 2nd hdd and added my cd-rom as a slave.
Its a pain , but the board screams.
Dylan Ginsburg
On Tue, 18 Jun 1996 t.wi...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> Anything on the second edi channel doesn't work with nt beta 2
> and this setup I've tried it on 4 systems with this same motherboard
> and they all have the problem - I suspect it is the beta nt release -
> ive been told that 3.51 works but im not willing to reinstall for the
> 40th time - I just disabled my 2nd hdd and added my cd-rom as a slave.
> Its a pain , but the board screams.
You must mean when using two processors. Because this definately isn't
the case with just one.
-Dylan
shawn....@state.or.us
In article , Dylan says...